This week the world telescoped into the bigness of things as I spent a day on a hillside in the Strathbogie Ranges looking at giant rocks and then out into a shimmering blue-grey expanse where the sky met the earth. Those eternal boulders looked like they might roll down the hill and out over the flat misty valley to disappear off the edge of the world. Maybe the flat-earthers are right.
The next day the world microscoped to a wasp struggling in a window cobweb.
The flashy thing in yellow and black striped Lycra flew in uninvited from a European nightclub as I opened the kitchen door. I looked around for a newspaper to roll into a club, but I was saved from the impending stoush when it flew into a window cobweb and woke up its owner — a black spider hiding in a corner of the window frame.
Suddenly I was thankful for the chief gardener’s habit of leaving indoor spiders and their sticky homes alone. She insists that spiders do a useful job of keeping other potentially more threatening creatures to a minimum.
And here was the evidence of her theory, based on observational science, not household sloth.
As Arachne carefully picked a route across the tangle of sticky white lines towards her prey, the wasp buzzed and wrestled with the strands of stretchy white silk only to find itself even more entrapped.
I was absorbed with the drama of impending battle. Spiderwoman versus Waspman — who would win? This was a Marvel superhero movie happening right here in my kitchen.
As the spider gingerly tackled the gluey lines of its own creation, a thought occurred to me. Why doesn’t it get stuck in its own web?
Fifty years ago, I would have gone to the family bookshelf and searched out spiders among my father’s weighty collection of Encyclopedia Britannica.
But today, of course, the bottomless suitcase of human knowledge exists online, in the shape of Google and AI. Even the venerable old EB fights for its dusty corner on the virtual web.
It turns out that spiders do not get stuck in their own webs because they spin sticky and non-sticky silk, and they avoid walking on the sticky lines. Also, they have moveable claws on their feet, which can grip and release the threads as they pick their way across the web.
Now I bet that’s something you didn’t know. Stick with me and I’ll trawl the web so you can keep learning useful Mastermind stuff.
As the spider closed in on the wasp, the web was stretched to near breaking point by the struggling invader. Perhaps it was the wasp’s spear-like sting angrily squirming in the sunlight, but suddenly the spider turned around and threaded its way back across the web to shrink down into its corner again.
The spider had decided its prey was too big, too nasty and not worth the fight. What did I learn from this microscopic moment?
I learned that just like Stan Grant fighting the poisonous behemoth of the Murdoch media with no support from his own colleagues — sometimes it pays to pick your battles, withdraw from the field and await another chance.
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